I am writing about some places I have visited in alphabetical order.
So far we have got through 12 letters of the alphabet so nearly halfway through the series.
From August 2004 to December 2010 we lived in Belgium and because of that we have had extra opportunities to visit places we would not have heard of before or particularly thought of visiting previously. Like
The Durbuy Maze etc.
One of these places was the small town of
Monshau in Germany.
Belgium and Germany share a border and just across that border from Belgium into Germany took us to that lovely picturesque location.
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By Karte: NordNordWest, Lizenz: Creative Commons by-sa-3.0 de,
CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35392837 |
It was a lovely day for a Fred and I to take a trip to show my sister and brother-in-law (yes the one who is the subject of a previous blog post
10 Gift Ideas for Your Brother-in-law ) another place while they were on one of their annual visits to us.
We also had our son Jonathan with us and as he spoke German he definitely was not going to be left out for two reasons. Firstly he loves to visit any new place especially anywhere that may have some old buildings and secondly I knew from experience that when visiting large towns & cities in European countries there will not be too many language problems as many of the people will speak a decent amount of English but in the smaller tons and villages there can be communication problems.
We arrived on that sunny morning and as we parked our car our first view of the town was gorgeous.
A beautiful house in a picturesque setting of a small bridge and stream - just like you might see on a jigsaw box.
While stopping here to take some photos we ended up with a very different photo of a visitor to my arm.
I tried to look it up in google later and it seems to be some form of beetle but isn't is so small & colourful. I did not mind having this beetle walking up my arm.
Walking on into the town we spied a fun type of transport and of course we couldn't resist taking the little train ride around the town and the surrounding area which involved up and down the hilly location. This ended up being a good move because we were able to walk around the higher area without having to walk up the hill or down the hill because of this perfect means of transport.
We took this photo of the two hubbies in front of our transport because all men love trains but in fact all 5 of us had a fun time on our train ride.
As I said Jonathan loves old buildings and we certainly had some of them to visit on this day trip.
Up the hill was the Castle of the Dukes of Julich and we enjoyed exploring around it with it's beautiful archway and so much still intact. The walls around the castle are clearly seen from the town sitting well below it.
After spending quite some time here we took the train down again to the town to do some more sightseeing.
Something I love to see is a clock tower and I loved this view I had through the trees of a very clear to read clock.
Then I scanned on up and saw the Swan at the top and thought how pretty this was
This turned out to the be the top of the Reformed Church in Monschau.
the clock face here was blue and there was another clock at the market square which had a white face but I must have forgotten to take a photo of it.
We had a look around inside the church and then Fred took a photo of the rest of us at the entrance.
There is a very ornate bridge leading across from the front of the church to the opposite street, just another thing to make this a very memorable town.
It was such a bright, sunny day that we stayed outside most of the time so did not go in to investigate the museum that was beside the Reformed church. It was called the Foundation Scheibler Museum and is highly recommended as one of the places to visit in Monschau.
We are often more interested in finding somewhere to have a good coffee and sit and people watch in beautiful surroundings which is what we did here with plenty of places to choose from for our cuppa in the centre of the town.
There are also lots of old, pretty wooden houses along the riverbank in Monschau. See how they hang out over the edge of the river because they are built right to the edge
and some even sit out precariously over the edge which makes me wonder about the architecture of these houses.
This white and black one to the left in the picture below really caught my attention because it seemed to have just been thrown together with it's walls ready to fall over because they were missing their support. Plus the fact that most of it was not straight - one of the more unusual houses I have ever seen.
I think it is so noticeable because it is close to the other white one which is so straight and upright.
I thought we would end now with a picture which encompasses the style of this village
the different types of buildings the lovely clock tower, the museum, the wooded hillside and the view of the castle walls.
I would definitely recommend a visit to this quaint town especially on a sunny day like we had.
If you missed any of the previous places in this series just click on the Titles below:
A for Alicante
B for Bratislava
C for Calpe
D for Durbuy
E for Ennis
F for Florida
G for Gran Canaria
H for HongKong
I for Islandmagee
J for Jersey
K for Killyleagh
L for Leeds
